


Blood-Bonds

by EnvyBakemono



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 05:03:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8388223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnvyBakemono/pseuds/EnvyBakemono
Summary: They made a promise sealed in blood, and blood pacts are not so easily broken. Royai, written for Mellorad on Tumblr for a giveaway.





	

**Author's Note:**

> TW: blood, character death, guns, self-harm reference, abuse, morbid creepiness

 

                It starts with a meeting of the eyes, although hers are lowered meekly behind eyelashes too thin and pale to hide the fiery cognac, and his are nervously flickering around, trying to find some place to rest that isn’t on his new teacher’s daughter. But for a few seconds, they are staring into each other, and even though neither of them understand the language of emotion or have the tongue to speak it, they say, _You are no stranger to me._

                They circle. For years, they circle. Never too cautious; never too much; just always in each other’s orbit. She makes bread in bare feet and lets the electricity of his alchemy work behind her raise every hair on her arms. He listens to the steady rhythm of her hands against the dough and her feet against the floor, and weaves it into the background tapestry of his life.

                The night she doesn’t come downstairs, the silence almost kills him, and when he knocks upon her door and lets it swing open, she can’t quite duck into the shadows fast enough for him to avoid seeing the black and gruesome mark on her cheek. But when he mutters a quiet curse and holds out his arm as a promise, she offers hers in return – small words are spoken, a knife flashes, and then he is bandaging the wound and kissing the bruise on her cheekbone with whispered reassurances.

                Above them, Berthold paces the attic floorboards, and they creak and moan and wail.

\---

                He’s dapper and proud in his uniform, but he’s been away for too long, and the sense of dread in him is building, and building – and he can’t help but remember how the scar on his wrist keeps flaring up, how it hasn’t stopped itching for the last two years, and how his back felt like fire and ashes just after he left. But blood pacts are for fairy tales, and what two scared children did too long ago to even remember doesn’t matter now.

                The smell of blood and gunpowder greets him as he walks into the house, feeling for the first time like a stranger. Something is wrong. Something is wrong.

                He moves into the study. Berthold sits upon his chair, a bloody handkerchief loose in his hand, but the blood on his face is from the hole in the dead center of his forehead, burns upon his skin and red painted onto the chair and wall behind him.

                Behind Roy come footsteps, bare feet upon the dusty and unswept floors. “You’re home.”

                He turns, and nods, and doesn’t let himself look at the gun in her still-small hands. It’s only later that he sees the vibrant colours upon her back, somebody else’s passions engraved upon her skin. “It didn’t hurt,” she says in her quiet and still voice. He doesn’t call her on the lie, even though his scar won’t stop itching.

\---

                Her blood is on him again – it’s pulsing and rushing and heaving over his hands, a flood that he can’t stop. Perhaps he’d be able to concentrate if it weren’t for her eyes – if she didn’t look so at peace with everything. “I will not let you _die!_ ” _Please don’t leave me._

                But instead of fighting or struggling, she just smiles and closes her eyes. The blood rushes, and slows, and stills, and before long there’s nothing but a body in his arms, and the scar on his wrist burns and sparks and then dies down into nothing but a cold line on his skin.

                The body in his arms is just a stranger now.

\---

                He doesn’t remember what happened. He knows she’s angry, that he did the very thing she told him not to do, but she also knows he had no choice. And after all, things are as they should be – she’s at his side, careful stitches crossing her neck and fluttering, dancing hands replacing her voice, and the universe is right. The silence doesn’t bother him – even if he could hear her, even if she could talk, there’s nothing left to say that they don’t already know. So instead she is his ears and he is her heartbeat, and they circle, and circle and circle.

                Blood pacts are not so easily broken.

 


End file.
